The Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) needs your help to identify faculty members who may have left your department in the last year with open human subjects protocols.

All active Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols at Texas Tech must have a principal investigator who is a full-time or tenured Texas Tech faculty member or a full-time employee with the terminal degree in their discipline.

When a faculty member leaves Texas Tech without closing their IRB protocols, the research study becomes out of compliance. The study also may include a graduate student who now is without a faculty member responsible for the research. In this case, the HRPP will work with the researchers to assign another PI to the IRB protocol so the graduate student can continue collecting data. Otherwise, the HRPP will need to close the IRB protocol.

Please send an e-mail to Donna Peters with names of your faculty members who have left the university within the last year. The HRPP will then look to see if there are any active human subjects research studies directed by the faculty member.

Donna Peters is the manager of the Human Research Protection Program Office. The office coordinates with the university’s Institutional Review Board.